As a companion study to our customer-facing “Customer Zeitgeist”, we’re asking digital executives, IT leaders, transformationists and strategic people dealing with the connected economy, all about the emerging technologies and the changing digital world.

Let’s go deeper than just naming trends, let’s put some weight and timing to them and figure out what’s really happening now. We’re calling the study “The 2018 Digital and Technology Periscope” and it follows up on a Digital Transformation Study we fielded last year.

We have got so many curiosities, we have divided the survey into two parts:

Having looked at more than a hundred digital transformation models, one of the common frustraters I find is that each model seems very tribal.

CIOs author transformation models focused on technology and the inherent issues of integration, platforms, security, features and compliance with passing reference to end users and business leadership.

And yet another party – CEOs/COOs author transformation models focused on how to generate competitive positionings, cost and workplace efficiencies, strategic alignment, culture change and organizational speed and delivery with passing reference to functional-specific issues related to technology, marketing, HR, sales and finance.

All of these are incomplete. True digital transformation embeds itself deeply in organizations and changes the culture, behaviours, strategies and tactics of the business, customer-facing, talent leading and technology managing facets of the business.

We’ve attempted to build a more holistic model – including the key 5 transformation segments, 10 sub-segments, 20 expected outcomes and 90 sub-areas of transformation concern. Let us know what you think and if we have missed anything.

Ask any CEO and they will tell you that leading a business is more difficult than it has ever been with more people and topics vying for your attention. A number of relatively new tribes of professionals are asking for their fair share of resources and management credibility, who shall wear the next C-suite crown?

Attached (above) are 12 roles that may be candidates for the crown. If you group them into clusters, they fall into 4 camps of executive level of talent:

Risk Security Focus – #1 Chief Compliance Officer, #2 Chief Security Officer (note: these two also overlapped with popular Chief Risk Officer) and #9 Chief Privacy Officer are focused on the legal, regulatory, privacy, security, risk management and disaster recovery demands and stewardship for the business in an increasingly complex age where threats might not be seen or forecast.

Digital Focus – #3 Chief Digital Officer, #4 Chief Content Officer and #8 Chief Data Officer point to a need for business to get more sophisticated about technology at an executive level with the explosion of technologies, digital media and sources of information and data sources now available.

Business Change Focus – creeping in at the bottom of the list is #12 Chief Transformation Officer – suggesting that the imperatives for business are so great that they need to move beyond a specific function and instead be spearheaded by a centralizing focus.

So what do you think? Who will be next? Which will have the lasting power to stick around? Is there a better new way to the C-Suite than these 12, let me know.

Here is the second instalment containing seven examples that point to a world that keeps getting quicker, faster and tougher to evaluate in the “Transportation” industry.

As we have seen over the last 30 years, massive disruption has hit the $4 trillion transportation industry. Detroit has shrunk into a tiny version of its former self. Air travel has continued to go through the constant boom and bust based on the economy and jet fuel prices, and has yet to collectively make a profit. The developing world can’t satiate themselves fast enough for the taste of car ownership while Western-World millennials would prefer none of it. And we all need to come to grips with increasing urban traffic congestion and its environmental effects the world over.

The difficulty in transportation is that when changes start to happen, they roll fast. And the lead times to catch up to that change can overwhelm companies, governments, societies and environments.

Here are the seven prime examples…whoosh:

Fast Forward #7 – Connected Automobiles (2012-2020)

By 2020, we will have 11X more connected automobiles being produced each.year than just 8 years ago, making them the majority of cars produced by 2020. Since the 1908 introduction of the Ford Model T, we have now entered the fourth generation of cars – beyond: merely available; easy to use; comfortable, safety and feature-driven; to now being mobility connected. We want our cars to be extensions of our smartphones, secure environments, entertainment streams and personalized feedback mechanisms. The revolution may be coming with a roster of anticipated and unforeseen benefits.

With the likes of CarGo, Zipcar, DriveNow and others, will the environmental, financial and lifestyle advantages of peer-to-peer car sharing make the idea of car ownership a thing of the past? Evidence – we will have 40X more car sharers in the world over the course of merely one decade by 2018

We have seen a tripling of bikes produced globally over a 40 year period. Driven by cheaper economics of bike production, increased paving, urban incentives and lifestyle preferences, it may be true H.G. Wells quote “every time I see an adult on a bicycle I no longer despair for the future of the human race”. But disturbingly, even though we can now own bikes, will we want to ride them? Even though most trips are within 5km, only 0.9% of all US trips are currently made by bike. Self-propelled, two-wheel fans and advocates, don’t despair – here are 10 countries to emulate.

As part of a personal and new economy manifesto, I have been compiling the best examples of a society, culture, business and technology that keeps getting sped up. It’s one thing to say it as a “throwaway line”, it’s another thing all together to find the evidence. I’ve been foolish enough to chase down various sources and work my way backward into history and forward into the future.

Here is my first initial instalment of 5 posts (x 6 examples) that point to a world that keeps getting quicker, faster and tougher to evaluate. These snippets once again prove that whereas “we may overestimate the change that is happening in the short term, we massively underestimate how much is changing in the near/long term.”

The key takeaways – embrace change, don’t get stuck on one paradigm, experiment and fail/scale quickly and become a daily, life-long learner looking at what’s changing constantly.

Here are the first ones…enjoy:

Fast Forward #1 – The Time We Spend on Digital Each Day (2008-2017)– yes it’s more than doubled over the last decade.

Fast Forward #2 – Digital Video The World Consumes Each Month (2008-2016) – and let’s just say PB = a petabyte which is a lot

Fast Forward #3 – The Number of Digital Devices We Connect To (2003-2020) – and since 6.6 is the average, many of us will have 30+ devices connected to us.

Fast Forward #4 – The Amount of Olympic Tweeting (from Beijing to London to Rio) – yes despite Twitter stagnation, this will be a social Citius, Altius, Fortius this summer

Fast Forward #5 – Global Social Network Audience (2007-2019) – in 12 years, we will have almost septupled the audience connected on social platforms